[CHART: EBOOK FAILINGS]
* Screen resolutions are too low to effectively replace paper
* People want to own physical books because of their visceral
appeal (often this is accompanied by a little sermonette on how
good books smell, or how good they look on a bookshelf, or how
evocative an old curry stain in the margin can be)
* You can't take your ebook into the tub
* You can't read an ebook without power and a computer
* File-formats go obsolete, paper has lasted for a long time
None of these seemed like very good explanations for the
"failure" of ebooks to me. If screen resolutions are too low to
replace paper, then how come everyone I know spends more time
reading off a screen every year, up to and including my sainted
grandmother (geeks have a really crappy tendency to argue that
certain technologies aren't ready for primetime because their
grandmothers won't use them -- well, my grandmother sends me
email all the time. She types 70 words per minute, and loves to
show off grandsonular email to her pals around the pool at her
Florida retirement condo)?
The other arguments were a lot more interesting, though. It
seemed to me that electronic books are *different* from paper
books, and have different virtues and failings.
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